Blogs of a bunch of friends

Day Twenty Four - Sunday

26 February 06 - 1:11 pm

Found a nearby laundromat. Closed, what with it being sunday. The weather's nice though, so off I went to catch up on attractions I'd marked earler. Took some photos - they start on page 4 of the gallery. Still not back to 100% in the walking department, but got a decent hike in anyway.

Got back to my room and realized I had quite a wad of coinage in my pocket. Of six 2-euro coins, I have zero duplicates. Yay for interesting currency. Also, that wad of coinage is actually worth something - over $25. Unlike, to pick an example at random, a similar mass or volume of US coinage. Bah.

Anyway, off I go to check out the local restaurant crop. There's what looks like a good Indian restaurant a few blocks away...

(later Sunday) Turns out the restaurant was hosting a private party or some such, so I had Chinese instead, that being the next restaurant I saw while wandering the neighborhood. I think we're all aware, at least intellectually, that Chinese food and restaurants in Madison have been Americanized. Similar changes happen in Italy. Again, intellectually, this isn't at all surprising, but I still get wierded out by Chinese restaurants serving pizza.

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Day Twenty Three - Saturday

25 February 06 - 06:24 am

I got into the hotel here after lunchtime yesterday, and skipped dinner because I really didn't feel like walking around with a sore foot in the rain. So this morning I had a big breakfast, or as big as is practical within the Italian definition of breakfast. Germany's really the place for big breakfasts since they believe in sausage and eggs and the like but croissants and OJ, in sufficient quantities, serve much the same purpose. It's only sprinkling now rather than outright raining, so I think I'll go scope out the neighborhood.

Got some money changed. Remind me never to do that here again. The change places have big boards of numbers and things. I'm looking for 2-3 numbers. Number one: dollar-to-euro exchange rate. Number two (optional): traveler's check dollar-to-euro rate, which is sometimes different. Number three: commission / service fee / whatever they call it. I scan the board. I find number one, a reasonable rate. I find no number two. I find a number three - about $5. I can deal with that. I give the guy my passport and traveler's checks. He does his paperwork for a while, and gets back to me with a number that's almost 40 euros lower than I expected. I shake it off, thinking I'd just mis-remembered some past transaction, and head off. Later, I realize what happened. I got charged an 18% fee on top of what was described as a fixed service fee of EUR3.90. Pissed off, I go back to the change booth and hunt for where exactly it says that. Unfortunately, I find it. At the bottom of the sign is something called a maximum currency buy fee, or some such phrase. Crap! In Spain I didn't pay any fees; in Germany and Switzerland I paid service fees sometimes, a few euros. But here they want an extortionate percentage on top of that? What the hell? The only upside to this little drama is that everywhere else I looked after that had the same sort of setup, so maybe it's something the Italian government allows that the others don't. Now I know, I guess. One more thing to watch out for.

Ran across a grocery store on the way back to the hotel, so I ducked in to buy foodstuffs. Not a great selection of travel foods, but I did get lunch bits. Had a time ordering salame and bread from a deli counter guy who doesn't speak a word of English, but was friendly and willing to play the no-common-language game. It didn't turn out too badly - of his simple Italian, I recognized enough words, guessed others based on similarity to Spanish, and filled in the gaps with gestures and intonation; I likewise managed to make myself understood with a few words in Italian and some pointing. The spoken numbers aren't quite the same as in Spanish, but g or gm is pretty clearly "gram" so I wrote out how much salame I wanted, and everything worked out well. There's a vending machine downstairs in the hotel that sells cans of soda for EUR2.50. I laughed when I saw it - that's rather high even by European standards. I bring this up because I got 1.5L (about 5x as much) of Sprite for less than half that at the grocery store. Two lunches worth of food, or a lunch and dinner depending on the rain situation this evening, for about $10, and I got a bag of cookies to go with. So there! Makes up for my irritation at the foreign exchange place a bit.

Yikes - I must really have overdone it on Thursday. I only walked a few miles yesterday and 3.5 miles today and I'm still perceptibly sore. Anyway, off to watch TV, make and consume lunch, and then maybe I'll sit in the hallway and post some pictures. I haven't taken any recently but I think I still have a day or two worth of shots that I haven't put up yet. Yep, a bunch of photos from Berlin (30 new ones, in fact. Start partway down page 2). If this weather keeps up, there won't be any at all from Milan. Tomorrow's forecast partly cloudy, but I'm guessing that means rain. If not, I've GPS marked a really pretty piazza and a few other places to visit.

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Day Twenty Two - Friday

24 February 06 - 08:30 am

Let me add a bit of detail to yesterday's post. Time spent searching for a hotel: 6.5 hours. Distance walked, carrying a backpack and dragging luggage in a city that doesn't really believe in curb cuts: 12 miles. Blisters formed: 1. Most time spent standing in a line at a hotel desk waiting for 3 people in front of me to be served, only to be told the hotel's booked: 40 minutes.

At least I found out why the hotels are all booked - there's some big fashion convention going on that paused yesterday and resumes Monday, so maybe I'll stay here until then and head for Venice Monday. Today, unfortunately, is looking like it'll be an off day, spent moping about indoors recovering from yesterday and avoiding the rain. And indeed it has kept raining all day, so I watched some TV, read some more, took the shower I avoided this morning on account of the nonfunctional heat and down-the-hall bathroom in the crummy little hotel I stayed at last night. There's even a water softener buried somewhere in here. That's a treat; I've been showering in hard water for quite a while. Hopefully the rain will stop in the next hour or so so I can wander a bit in search of a grocery store and restaurant.

Reading; Kraftwerk in the background. There's noise outside, and I slowly clue into the fact that it's someone trying my door. Not just once, checking to see if it's open. This person's persistent, and it sounds like there's a key involved. I go to the door, and there's a guy who's got a key and shows me the little wrapper with a room number on it - looks like 125 (my room) to me. Maybe it's a 7? A 4? In any event, it shouldn't be a 1, so the guy ambles off to try other floors.

(The Vodafone WAP sucks. Boy does it suck. I'll rant later. I honestly tried to give them money, and failed repeatedly. Stumbled upon an open net-connected wap down the hallway, and am now sitting on the floor, blocking the hall. Go me.) Inside because it's been raining, hard, for over 4 hours. What the hell?

ben - two comments - Permalink

Day Twenty - Wednesday

24 February 06 - 08:28 am

Well well well, the GPS satellites over Germany didn't all simultaneously die after all. I don't know what was wrong with the GPS receiver, but it kept going through its satellite acquisition cycle without finding anything, and I couldn't find any way to reset it or any misconfigurations in the various menus. But I have been around computers long enough to know that if you keep trying something that should work, eventually you'll have either success or a fire, so every few days I give it another try. Today when I powered it on, I got a POST / diagnostics screen I'd never seen before. LCD test, button test indicators, software and operational parameters, etc. With no apparent way to exit the screen, I powered down and powered back up again in a relative clearing. This time the satellite acquisition algorithm actually found things, and the machine seems to be working again, so now I have a helpful alternative / addition to maps. The Milan map is actually pretty good and covers quite a wide area, almost 100 square kilometers.

While walking around, I saw two people who'd stopped on their respective dog walks to chat. One had a dog that looked like a small lab; the other had a dog barely bigger than Gracie. The big dog was growling at the little dog, lunging against its leash and snapping, close enough to touch the little one's fur, but not to actually bite it. With almost feline disdain, the little dog stood there, barely out of reach, looking at the big dog.

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Day Twenty One - Thursday

24 February 06 - 08:28 am

Let me sum up today with a short one-act alegorical play.

Scene: A bare, gray concrete skate park. Near the center, a LEPER sits, in begging posture.

[Enter a LADY in jeweled finery]

LEPER: M'lady, could you spare a poor man a hotel room?

LADY: Fuck off. (she kicks the LEPER)

Exit. Curtain.

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Day Nineteen - Tuesday

24 February 06 - 08:27 am

I spent longer packing than I thought, but a quicker-than-expected breakfast evened things out, and I got to the train station roughly on schedule. The train took a bit longer to arrive than I'd hoped for, and took a lot longer to get to the airport than I'd budgeted for. I pretty much used up the entire half hour I added in for just such unexpected delays before I even got to the airport. Then there was the small matter of the airline telling me to head for terminal 2 in an airport whose terminals are demarcated by letters. Turns out two is longhand for B (I guess it could be worse: 2 could mean C), so I headed for that terminal, checked in, and ditched my baggage.

Then stood in an interminable line for security. Short, but extremely slow. Two screening lanes, and they got maybe three people a minute through there between them. In an above-average minute. No signs that I saw asking for laptops to be out (though there may have been annoucements in German, I suppose), and it didn't even occur to me that this would be a problem because the only place it's been a problem so far is the USA, so through I went. The reason the lines were so slow is because they hold them up for people to clear out of the far side where they're grabbing their bags and putting clothes back on. I got to the far side, got my wallet and keys, put on my belt and coat, all somewhat slowly because there are screens showing baggage scans at the end of the queue, which is interesting. Then someone asked if my backpack was mine. Yes. Could you please take your laptop out and put it in the bin? Okay. Now close your bag please; we'll re-scan them. Okay. So they rescan my laptop and bag separately (still holding up the line because I'm there waiting), and ask about "the long tool" and scissors. I'm a bit confused, but am looking at the monitor that's showing the scan of my bag. Some things are identifiable; some are identifiable only because I know what's packed where. The man points at the screen. Oh. I take out my spork. And a little pair of nose hair scissors, which look on the screen like vicious long-bladed attack scissors because they're lined up just right with the metal handle of my razor. I demonstrate their innocuousness and then re-pack, still holding up the line. It's a darn good thing the security checkpoint is only screening people for two or three gates, or nobody would get to their plane on time.

I spent most of the flight reading, but happened to glance over when we were flying over the Alps, and it was clear enough to see them. Pretty. Would have taken a picture, window plastic and all, except I was on an aisle seat...

The Malpensa airport is not actually in Milan. It's almost an hour away by bus. Or rather, 20-30 minutes away, but downtown is almost an hour away. The bus drops me off at the train station, where I locate the tourist office. This takes a while, because there are no signs that say "tourist office". There's a red neon T, but it's not clear what it means, especially since it's just part of a big sign for another business. The office isn't through the doorway under the T; it's through the doorway next door, which has its own set of signs, none of which mention the tourist office. So you go through the next-door door, through the middle of a jewelry store, and then the tourist office is on the left. Classy.

In any event, I got a map and started checking hotels. The first three I tried were full (?!?) but I found a helpful desk person who called around for me and found a place a few blocks away. Hopefully the rain will stop by dinner time, which I suppose could be anywhere from now until 10pm. I'll have to check on that.

That was pretty darned good. The tiramisu of course, but also the fish, and I'm not usually a big fish man. Also pretty darned expensive, but there's a trick to it: after almost half a bottle of wine, the former seems more important than the latter. I do believe I'm past the point you could even charitably call tipsy, and am into "slightly drunk" territory. Hurray.

I should probably go back and edit the timestamps on my blog entries so they match the day about which they're speaking. That way you could use the built-in calendar thingy in the right frame to get some sort of meaningful information. Maybe later.

ben - two comments - Permalink

Day Eighteen - Monday

24 February 06 - 08:26 am

Last real day here in Berlin. Checked out the Brandenberg Gate, wandered about the near east side a bit. Stood in line to head up to the high dome of one of the buildings there, but abandoned the idea after the line moved less than two steps up the outside stair in 5 minutes. Did some shopping. Bought three novels in two books, and a couple CDs which had better be good because I'll be toting them around for six weeks before I get to listen to them.

Watched the news and listened to some more of my audio books before dinner at a nearby Italian hole in the wall. $6 for pasta and wine and sitting next to a ladies' night out table. Put me in a good mood, so I didn't mind walking home in the rain. It's only 9:30 but I'm yawny - that's probably the wine too. If there's nobody using the computer downstairs, I'll go post this and grab another batch of webpages to read, perhaps on the plane tomorrow.

I think it made CNN, so maybe some of you know about the big carnaval going on in Venice, but I first heard of it from the desk guy who headed down there yesterday. I think they said it's ten days long, so there should be time to see Milan and then head down there myself. Yay: goals!

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Day Seventeen - Sunday

19 February 06 - 05:10 am

Got up and talked to the older desk guy, whose English is much better than the younger guy's. After asking questions that I initially considered strangely irrelevant (how much laundry? Colors and whites?), he offered to run them through the hotel's machines. I asked what he'd charge for that, and he said free. That being the most correct of all possible prices, I took him up on the offer. So not only do I get free clean clothes, but I don't have to spend time sitting at a laundromat, trying to decipher their equipment directions (which tend to be German only, and with very poor or nonexistent pictographs). Score.

Also, I checked out train fare to Milan. Almost two hundred euros, and a 12-16 hour trip. While I'm sure going through the Alps by train would be pretty, I'm not sure that it can favorably compare to a plane ride that's a quarter as long and half the price. Accordingly I bought a ticket on some outfit called Easyjet, whose ads I saw somewhere (see? advertising really works, even on me!). Cheaper fare on Tuesday than on Monday, so I'm spending my savings on another night here, meaning tomorrow I can also head east and see the sights. Most museums will probably be closed, but at least I can see the outsides of their pretty buildings. And there's something I wanted to see near one of the train stops out there. I saw it on the way in, but can't for the life of me remember what it was, so hopefully I'll see it again.

Headed for the far side of town to the museums there, but got distracted by things along the way, and never made it to the far end of the bus route. There's a bus (actually two) that run a sort of tourist route. They're not actually tour busses, in that they're part of the regular municipal bus system, but the route pretty much snakes from the downtown train station through the various major attractions. Turns out the zoo really is a zoo (and a pretty big and well-known one too, with over 15,000 animals and such), even if they call it a garden to confuse the tourists. Went to the east-side Egyptian museum, where I got a few photos. Headed into some little gallery doing what they called a Picasso homage or some such. I like Picasso, so in I went. The intro text tried to explain how nearly 10,000 pages (yes, 8.5 x 11 or maybe A4 pages) filled with repeating handwritten numbers and letters, framed in batches of 36 and stacked floor-to-ceiling, somehow related to Picasso and the conception of time. Not the best $5 I ever spent, though I did buy a cool postcard at the museum shop.

Neglected to bring a spare camera battery, and so ran out of power. It happened at almost 3pm, so I headed back west for lunch, a recharge, and to rest my feet. By the time I got back and got the battery in a happy condition again, it was moving toward museum closing time (which seems to vary wildly from museum to museum, but even so I decided to stay here). So instead, I'm typing up these notes and will head downstairs to putz about online some more.

I never actually linked to the QTVR version of the Frankfurt panorama. I'm a bad person. Here it is: Frankfurt panorama. It weighs in at 2.6MB, so dialup users beware.

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Day Sixteen - Saturday

18 February 06 - 05:15 am

Headed out to a nearby castle / museum / gardens thingy, intending to see the archaeological museum across the street as well, but spent all day at the castle instead. Got a few exterior pix, but no photos inside. That place was huge. The widest photo I got of the outside covers less than a third of it. It's not entirely clear what overall fraction of the building and contents is original - it was damaged by the usual hazards of time: cannon, fire, bombs. Still, pretty impressive. I paced off one of the rooms at about 20' by 75'. There were the usual opulent bedchambers, offices, entertaining rooms, feast halls, etc. Also a bath chamber with the bath the size of a small swimming pool. Etc. etc.

Paid the hotel bill in cash, which is great in theory (might as well sign my traveler's checks here...) but left me temporarily cashless, and unable to find a change place this far from the city center. So I asked the desk clerk, and he said he could use dollars since he's taking a trip next week, so we worked something out. I also asked about a laundromat, but he couldn't help much with anything nearby, since he doesn't live that near the hotel. He did give me what I understood to be a stored-value card for a small chain of laundromats and googled the address of the most-nearby one, which would require a bus trip to downtown, but I suppose that's OK. He also suggested I talk to the "old man" (he's oldER, but not exactly old) who has the other desk shift, since he lives nearby.

Backing up a second, there's a computer in the lobby. An old full tower machine. With a real ether cord (real short too, but that's OK) feeding it. So I swiped that and sat online for a while. I don't know exactly how long, but it was enough that he came by to ask if I planned to stay there all night. I finished uploading some photos and got offline. Meanwhile, we chatted a bit. He seemed mildly surprised that there's no mandatory military service in the US, a topic brought up by my mentioning that I'd recently graduated from university. Apparently he's originally from Turkey, and while my German and his English didn't permit nailing the facts down with typical surety, it sounded like he stayed in school and put off the military service until he moved to Germany.

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Day Fifteen - Friday

18 February 06 - 05:11 am

Rain. Rain. Rain. Three days in a row, rain. If I'd realized exactly how hard it was raining earlier in the day, I would have stayed another day just to avoid moving, but as it was, I just wanted to get out of that hotel. Pretty cheap, but even so, way too much money for a bed with no bounce and a crummy pillow in a boring part of town. When I picked the stop (Berlin has several), I thought "hm. Zoo sounds interesting. Berlin zoo it is." Which was a fine idea, except that it soon became apparent that zoo is short for zoological garden, which I wasn't about to go traipsing around in, in the rain, in February. Not to mention that the map that I acquired tersely informed me that all the museums were a couple miles west, or a couple miles east.

So today I thought I'd escape the crap hotel and wander out toward the western set of museums, which had attracted my attention. Figured I'd get a better hotel there, and all would be well. This was, evidently, foolish in the extreme. First of all, the afore-mentioned rain. Next, the lack of hotels. I finally found a sign proclaming MOTEL. Situated a bit back from the road, pointed to by a sign painted on the back of a delivery truck that's apparently a permanent parking lot fixture. The sign on the building proper says "Motel ** Hotel". Now, I'm not real clear on the difference that first letter makes, but generally I like my businesses to have a clearer idea than that of what business they're in. And since the place I was staying last night rated three stars, I wasn't hopeful at the sight of this establishment's two. So in I go, and the reception doubles as a bar, and the asking price is a third less than the hotel I was fleeing. Shit. But I'm soaked, pissed off that I've been walking for an hour in the rain with nary a pause, and now that I've finally found a hotel, it looks to be clearing up (later: sure enough, cleared up.), and I'm in no mood to argue. I pay the man and go upstairs (no elevator). The room's big, clean, well-stocked with furniture (including an apparently-useless bookcase in one corner. Empty, of course), and comes with a better bathroom. Score! The only downside is that it's cold, but that's because the radiator's off, which I fix just as soon as I get done soaking an entire towel drying my glasses, hair, and coat.

No 'net access, but at this point I don't think I care. I am vaguely annoyed that the lamp here that's clearly intended to be a reading lamp has a measly 15W bulb in it. No, not a fluorescent bulb. A full-sized 15W incandescent bulb. You can stare at it and not screw up your night vision. I didn't even know they made such things. Anywho, I'm hoping my shoes will dry, at least as far as the damp stage, before it's time to head out in search of dinner. And the rain had better hold off too. Ciao.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Day Thirteen - Wednesday

18 February 06 - 05:10 am

The number of the counting is Berlin. And, if I understand the German + gestures of the person sitting across from me, he says "yes, I took your seat. Do you mind sitting in mine? It's just over there, number 62." To which I hopefully conveyed "Not at all. I was just confused and sought assurance that I'm in the right place, despite evidence to the contrary in the form of what I thought was my seat being already taken." And we're on our way. It's raining. Perhaps that curse is not broken after all. Judging by the advertising on a train that I saw pulling into the station while waiting for my train, some of the trains here have wifi on them. Judging by the waning strength of the visible T-mobile APs, this train is not so equipped. Not that I'm interested in T-mobile's paperwork, let alone their fees... Anyway, off I go.

Well, since I'm sitting here on this nice fancy train, with power outlets and everything, I might as well spend my time (or at least the CPU's time) stitching together some panoramas for you folk. I wish I hadn't been dumb and left my mouse at home. I'd forgotten why I don't use this software much. Wanting somewhere north of 400MB of RAM (on a system with no swapping enabled) isn't really compatible with letting Firefox chew through memory at the same time.

The Frankfurt panorama (also in QTVR format - an experiment) turned out pretty well. The ghost people effect is minimal because it was warm enough to wait for a clear foreground and just a small crowd farther away on the bridge. Fully automatic stitching actually worked quite well, I think. One of the benefits of using a tripod, even if it is, technically, the wrong tripod and the wrong camera for panorama work. The QTVR movie preserves a surprising amount of the original detail though if you start zooming, the differences are noticeable.

The Nuremberg plaza image is an interesting one. The stitching software did a good job here too, coping with the fact that the overlap between frames included in many cases people who had moved from frame to frame. That day was colder, and the traffic heavier, so I didn't put as much effort into getting clean overlaps from frame to frame, so there are several ghost people in evidence. I did drop the worst offenders though, and the double image of the woman at her fruit stand to the right was deliberate. I like how that part turned out.

In about an hour when I get to Berlin we'll see how the internet situation turns out - I may even get this stuff posted tonight! Now, if only the rates for those nifty little cell-network data transfer card thingies (GPRS? HSPDA? I guess if I were in the market, I'd have some idea what I'm talking about) weren't so rediculous, I could be online right now, like the guy across from me. I saw a blurb at El Reg about them - they're only about $100, but paying by the byte will get you. I don't know where he got it, but the guy sitting next to me found this little pamphlet about the train we're on. I guess it's a daily train so it's worth their effort. Anyway, it details the restaurant cars and the like, and mentions that there are two cell repeaters on the train, which I found interesting.

Arrived. Still raining, over five hours later. On the plus side, warmer. Meh.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Day Fourteen - Thursday

18 February 06 - 05:10 am

Wandered a bit today. Found the shopping district. I think I'll take it easy. Thursdays can be tiring, you know. There's a greek restaurant about 4 doors down from the hotel. Closed. Gutted, in fact.

No luck on the internet access front, alas. I found several inviting APs, but none with internet access behind them. This is starting to get frustrating.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Day Twelve - Tuesday

18 February 06 - 05:09 am

Spent over three hours at the combined transportation museum and communications museum today. The transportation museum was really just an ad for Deutche Bahn, albeit an informative and interesting one, tracing the evolution of trains from the early 1800s to 1990 and throwing in a bit of history about the Weimar Republic and Naziism along the way. One whole floor was models of various trains and train apparatus. Special docks and ships so trains could drive right into the bowels of a ship and then back off again at their destination before the advent of containerized shipping. Various special-purpose rolling stock. Machinery for building the trains, mainly steam engine construction and wheel assembly, including various nifty mechanisms to turn the trains entirely upside down. An exhibit of cross-sections of various types of track and wheels.

The communications museum was even niftier than the last one I went to (though apparently run by the same public / private joint venture as the last one, and 3 or 4 more throughout the country). The second room, which has great big intricate electromechanical phone switching gear from the '50s and '60s, is filled with a high-pitched whine that would be inexcusable except that it comes from said switching equipment because it's operational. Each exhibit has four or five phones, and invites you to dial from phone to phone and watch the equipment switch your call. It's really incredible that the phones worked at all with so many moving parts needing to mesh perfectly hundreds of times per call. As with the last such museum, it included info about the mails in addition to telecoms bits. This one had a stamp exhibit, and a collection of hundred-year-old postcards.

The brat vendor I saw last night who I hoped would be in the same place for lunch today was nowhere to be seen. The Greek restaurant a few blocks over was as closed today at lunch as it was yesterday at dinner. I think it may be out of business. Two disappointments in a row.

Mmm, grease. The Domino's pizza I had in Switzerland, while quite tasty, was insufficiently Americanized to satisfy my craving for a greasy pizza. The Pizza Hut pizza I'm in the middle of eating has no such problems. It's actually not as good a pizza, but it's better food to eat in front of the TV while tired, particularly since the restaurant's literally 15 feet from the hotel's front door, in the same building in fact.

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Day Eleven - Monday

18 February 06 - 05:08 am

Got about 11 hours of sleep last night, which hopefully will make up for the past few days of not sleeping well, and should help me kick this darn cold.

Random note: The soap I shamelessly stole from the last hotel (and good thing, too - this one just has icky liquid soap) says "Bienvenue" and "Paris" on it. That is not, by itself, strange. It seems all hotel soaps try to associate themselves with Paris, no matter where in the world you're staying. The ingredients list is even in faux-French / English. The soap itself, however? Made in Spain.

Curses! It's not raining, or even snowing, so I guess things could be worse, but this trip's travel curse seems to be running into conventions. There's something called "embedded world" running from today until Thursday, and some other convention covering the weekend, so hotel prices are going up.

The hotel offers laundry service, so I checked out the prices. At $6/shirt, I can walk quite a while looking for a laundromat. Besides, it'd be kind of a waste to dry clean these clothes. The hotel also offers internet access, via a series of Vodafone WAPs. First of all, there's no way I'm paying $30/day for internet access. Second of all, there's no way I'm agreeing to their terms of service (may not get posted before this entry goes live). Third, even if I did agree to their TOS, and didn't mind their extortionate rates, they won't give me net access because I don't have an SMS-capable cellphone handy. What the hell is wrong with these people? If I had a god damned cellphone, I wouldn't need their lousy wifi, now would I?

Time to go consult my map, which won't have the information I'm looking for, and then go out wandering, with an eye toward coffee shops advertising free wifi (they aren't everywhere like they are in Madison, but they do exist), laundromats, and interesting museums. Ciao.

Ok, no free wifi that I could find. There is, however, an internet terminal thing in the lobby that the management apparently doesn't mind if you sit on for at least half an hour at a time (judging by my time waiting around for some guy to leave). I'll head back down there in a bit, and hopefully he'll be gone so I can molest the machine, searching for the sweet sweet ether cable that I hope is feeding it. Looks like the hotel used to offer at least limited free net access, but since their deal with Vodafone they've turned the equipment off. Alas. While waiting for Mr. Internet, I noticed a stack of Embedded World magazines. Yep, it's a big embedded systems conference, though the articles in the magazine were a bit less interesting than they could have been, since I could read only about every tenth word.

I did find a laundromat though, and it was really cheap. Washed all my clothes this time. In Switzerland I washed as little as I could get away with, but here I got two loads washed and dried for 10 euros. It would have been even less if I had one euro coins rather than just twos, and understood the system a bit better.

No dice on the internet appliance. It is apparently made of some deep dark voodoo whose secret depths I cannot plumb. I eventually conceded defeat, put the cable back, and used it more or less as intended. It's running a locked-down Windows install with some funky custom interface overtop a crufty old IE renderer that visibly screwed up several of the pages I visited.

Went out wandering before dinner, then had some very good Chinese food, then went back to the hotel, watched some curling (when it's in German, I don't feel as bad about not understanding anything that's going on) after deciding that Myth Busters, while amusing in German, isn't actually much fun to watch that way, and fell asleep reading a collection of Bradbury short stories.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Day Ten - Sunday (updated)

13 February 06 - 01:51 am

Front desk person disclaims all knowledge of the internet situation, and the person who's supposed to be fixing it isn't available because it's Sunday. Bah. I guess I'll decide where to go when I get to the train station.

Upon checkout, they didn't even mention charging me for internet access - neato. Slowed down more than I anticipated by my baggage, I barely made it to the train station on time, but did get into the city. Looked at the departure board - Nuremberg looks interesting. So off I go. Cheap ticket too. Jenni would like Germany - train, S-bahn and U-bahn, and bus tickets are completely automated. You can do some pretty complicated things like booking tickets via somewhere in particular, or planning out some wacky multi-leg, multi-day journey, and these machines actually have all the relevant bits in English like their billing claims, so there's no pressing random colored buttons hoping something works. Actually, no buttons at all: touchscreens.

The train was a few minutes late getting into the station, but everyone hustled aboard and we're on our way. Tickets were cheap, so I went first class, apparently one of two people who had that idea. There's one other person in a different section of the first class train, so I'm taking up 4 seats and not feeling the slightest bit guilty about it since there are 8 more free in here. There are power outlets between the seats up here, so not only can I listen to Science Friday on the train, but I can do it without draining my battery. Joy of joys. Now, here's hoping there's a tourist info place or a hotel reservation board at the train station when I arrive - I don't fancy wandering about hoping I can find a place to stay, but it may come to that.

Courtesy of ample power along the way, I left netstumbler going on the train ride - it found over 200 WAPs, more than 3/4 encrypted. Got into the train station and followed the signs labeled tourist information to a nearby building. Though the tourist info desk was unmanned that late in the day on a Sunday, there was plenty of information available, so I got a map and looked at the hotel information, eventually deciding on a hotel about 2 blocks from the train station. Lay down to listen to music for a while until a reasonable dinner time, and woke up after midnight.

ben - two comments - Permalink

Day Nine - Saturday (updated)

10 February 06 - 7:09 pm

Yep, it's official. Getting sick. I slept longer last night, so hopefully I'll get better soon. Had a big breakfast again, even bigger than yesterday. Double checked with the front desk, and someone apparently called to say he's also sick, and may or may not show up today. Hopefully that will be a not. Told them about the broken net access, so hopefully that will get fixed so I can post this stuff. At very least, I've started justifying not paying for more than 4 hours worth. Yeah. This room is in that uncomfortable middle price range where you don't get free internet access - in fact, their price sheet lists per-hour, per-day, and weekly rates. Classy. I just hope they aren't paying for their access by the byte - that would make me an expensive guest.

Intarweb fixed. Got my fix of mail and such. Not a whole lot going on though since it's the wee hours, US time. Started downloading Run Lola Run from home. Should take about 13 hours. Off I go!

Headed out to the architecture museum and got distracted by a big open-air market that had opened up on the waterfront and the museum street. Wandered through there for a while, idly checking for cheap USB mice. No dice. Plenty of cordless drills, random hardware, clothing, appliances, CDs and LPs, and other used and new stuff. Went to the museum. Some interesting stuff, but not as great as Mara talked it up to be. A nice enough place, sure, and there was a cafe in the front too, but it didn't compare with some of the others I've been to, on a strict museumness-to-space-dinar ratio.

Stopped by a middle eastern dried fruit shop I'd seen yesterday on the way back to the train station. Picked up some travel snacks. This was the best-stocked dried fruit shop I do believe I've ever seen. Pretty much anything that eats dirt and sunlight and makes sugar was available in dried form. The standard apples, pineapple (pieces and rings), cranberries and grapes. Also coconut, pear, mango, and kiwi. Some nuts and berries as well. And that was just the front row of stuff.

Back to the room to drop off my tripod and rest my feet before dinner. Ended up napping for a bit over an hour - good thing I set an alarm in case that happened. Headed back to the city. Turns out their hotel isn't quite as near the train stop as I'd thought when I saw it yesterday. After exiting the train station, I was headed out perpendicular to the direction I wanted to go, so I took the first promising-looking right turn. Which took me up a winding ramp back up to train level - this isn't looking good, especially when the sidewalk on the side of the road gave out. There's still one on the other side, so I crossed over, looking somewhat warily at the nice open parking lot I could be crossing instead, if I hadn't gotten on what is now looking like a freeway exit ramp. Sure enough, it's a twisting maze of exit and entrance ramps for the big road I'm slowly walking over. Twilight, in a long black coat, walking on a narrow sidewalk while buses are zooming by, is a bit more adventure than I'd bargained for, but I made it across without decorating anyone's fender, and the hotel wasn't far after that. Met up with my aunt and uncle and a friend of theirs from Spokane and had drinks in the hotel bar. Then headed out to wander for a while until dinner - stopped by a big department store to check out the cookware, and then off to dinner, which was farther out of the city than any of us suspected - good thing the cabbie knew where it was. Met up with about 10 more friends of Phil and Mara's and took over a corner of the restaurant. They'd run out of English menus, so we got German ones. They didn't have any in Italian, so the Italians had to order based on clumsy English explanations provided by the waiter and then translated into Italian by Walter. Mostly we stuck to Mara's advice: don't order any organ meats. If the waiter can point to where a cut of meat comes from, it's OK. If he starts saying things like "...below the heart, and then you move past the..." you should stay clear.

Turns out they were all in town for the big convention, the 'ambiente' convention, that made my hotel hunt so entertaining. Apparently it draws almost 100,000 people, which explains why in years past they had to stay as much as 45km outside Frankfurt and take the train in every morning. Now they just book their room for the following year as they check out at the end of the convention. I'm glad Gencon's not that crazy. But the hotels and the convention operators are much better organized - you can look online by room type and see how many are available at each hotel and at what price. It probably evens out for the attendees, even if it does sort of muck up the city for everyone else for a few days. I'm sure Frankfurt loves it. Extrapolating from the Gencon numbers, it probably brings about two hundred million euros to the city.

Got back from dinner about midnight, so there was nobody at the desk to bug about 'net access, which timed out this evening. I'd like to check my email and post this before leaving tomorrow.

Oh! Quick note about the communications museum. In the lobby they had grazing sheep. Not real ones - sheep made of phone cord, with old rotary telephones for faces. CUTE!

ben - one comment - Permalink

Day Eight - Friday

10 February 06 - 07:24 am

I vaguely expected a low-rent breakfast, given that it was included with the room price, but I was wrong. I'm not saying it was an Indianapolis Hilton class breakfast (no omelette chef on duty here), but it was pretty darn good. And, it didn't cost an extra $15 or whatever, either. Really awful coffee, but good otherwise. Scrambled eggs, sausage (you might expect the Germans could do a good breakfast sausage - you'd be right), croissant, apple juice, orange juice, fruit salad. Also I got the room for a second night, which puts me in a better mood since I can actually do something today rather than hunt up another hotel and drag my bags about the city.

I slept well, but not nearly long enough, with the result that I got an early start to the day. Headed back into the city and went to a modern art museum. Even wackier building than last time, and no self-mutilation either, so I'd call it a good experience even if the only piece I really liked wasn't available in postcard form. Went to the city history museum, which wasn't as enthralling as I'd hoped, though they did have a great annotated model of a 16th century souk. Also upstairs in the photo / newspaper clipping gallery of the city's history was a photo from a Kraftwerk tour, alongside Fats Domino and Barry White. I doubt Mark reads this, but he would've gotten a kick out of it. Tried to go see the Applied Arts museum, but gave up after spending perhaps half an hour trying to find an entrance. I finally found a sign...in a parking lot. And I think I found the museum, but it didn't have a sign, and there weren't any doors. Perhaps less applied art and more applied architecture would have helped. Did not go to the architecture museum, nor the german film museum, but I did go to the communications museum, which was everything I'd hoped it would be. Wonderful old computers and faxes, video and audio gear, radio equipment, telephone and telegraph stuff, mail related stuff. Cell phones got WAY smaller from 1990 to 1995, and noticeably smaller again from '95 to '05. Saw a suitcase sat-phone, a 1960s video recorder as big as a washer and dryer, a couple Enigma machines, some '30s radio equipment with static antennae - nothing tuned. There were a bunch of telegraph bits, some early fax machines, a dozen or so ticker tape machines. There was half a wall filled with lovely old German mail boxes of varying sorts, as well as restored mail cars and even buggies from the turn of the century (no, the century before that).

The room has only one heater, and it's in the bathroom. Ordinarily this could be a bit wierd, and might cause problems, but actually not. It's really hot in the room, which is why the window is opened to keep the main room livable. The bathroom is too warm for normal comfort, but it's nice when getting out of the shower. Also, the heater seems to blow heat onto the floor (or maybe there's just something really hot a floor before me), which warms it quite pleasantly. The main room's fairly large, with a desk (the top lifts up to become a mirror - wha?) and stool, a chair and sofa, an end table, and a night stand. There's some broken glass, mostly in the corner, which the cleaning folks failed to clean up yesterday, somewhat to my disappointment.

I wondered why my lovely free internet access died last night, and now I know. They changed vendors. So we went from a swiss-cheese captive portal (it blocked outgoing HTTP requests and that's about it - ICQ, IMAP / SMTP, and SSH all worked, which is way more than I need to get the rest going) that got me good, free net access to one that closes the holes and forces me to pay for it. And it's a good thing I bowed to their demands too - I got an email from Phil and Mara postponing our meeting an hour. Unfortunately, not only does the new portal actually force me to pay for net access, but it breaks ICQ, and broke completely at about 11, so this posting will be somewhat delayed.

The hotel here isn't cheap, but it's nice, so I'd call it a good deal overall. I checked with the front desk this evening and they're full tomorrow, so I'll have to hotel hunt again. That's kind of a drag, but I'm pretty sure the convention has actually started, so there should be cancellations coming in and some more rooms opening up elsewhere. Also, they'll let me leave my bags at the front desk so at least I won't be burdened with that all day.

Yep, it's official. This is a rural setting: I hear a sheep mooing outside.

Got some pictures posted before the intarweb died. Go check 'em out.

Meh. I think I'm getting sick.

ben - four comments - Permalink

Day Seven - Thursday

10 February 06 - 06:25 am

Awoke; boarded the tram to "Rail City"; bought ticket to Frankfurt. Minutes later, realized ticket is completely incomprehensible, being written entirely in German is the least of its problems. There is no time on the ticket, no track number, no seat number. It is in fact two tickets, one that says ticket from Zurich to Frankfurt, and one which says supplement from Basel to Frankfurt. And the departure board doesn't list any trains leaving for Frankfurt. I asked the ticket office info desk what the deal was. I was told the ticket's valid for any one trip to Frankfurt in the coming week, and that the next train would leave in just over an hour, via Basel. Good thing I caught that last part, as the departure board just said Basel, and I would have missed my train otherwise. So I get to Basel and then have to hunt up the train to Frankfurt, which ended up leaving about 3 minutes after I found it and got aboard. Lucky, that.

Got to Frankfurt, bought a map with museum and other touristy info on it as well, and inquired about hotels. I was told there's a big international fair thing going on, some huge deal. I forget the word the tourist info woman used, but it was something like "lifestyle". I guess the basic idea is that it's a convention for all things a trendy apartment would contain. Or something. Wonder if that's the same thing my aunt and uncle are going to - I'll have to ask. In any event, all the hotels are 1. three times the normal price and 2. full anyway. Because I got in so late from the long train ride, the tourist info person managed to find me a room at the non-tripled rate because it's a cancellation. So I get to stay for not-insane prices, even if it is only for the one night, and is 9km away by subway.

So I make the reservation and head to the subway. There are automatic ticket machines with little screens and directions in a half-dozen languages. Only the directions are incomplete, the destination numbering is unclear, the error messages it gives me when I do it wrong are generic and unhelpful, and I'm starting to get frustrated. A helpful fellow traveler saw me fighting with it and came to help. He got me mostly straightened out (I still don't know what the 8 or 9 colored buttons with German words on them mean, nor why it costs $10 more to go to the stop I want as opposed to the one after it), and I got my ticket, even if it did cost more than the tourism office said it would.

Headed down to the track; waited; got on the train. I'm not even sure whether the ticket I have is actually for the mode of transportation I'm on, but it doesn't matter because nobody checks these things. The fines must be exorbitant for traveling sans ticket, or everyone would be doing it. I took 3 trams in Switzerland and the subway here in Germany and nobody checked a ticket anywhere. Anyway, I got off at the earlier stop, which turned out to be a barely-lit stop in the middle of nowhere that didn't even merit a bus-stop-style shelter. Good thing there's a bus stop (which actually did have a shelter!) nearby that would theoretically take me where I needed to go. The bus arrives; I try to get on, but the bus driver won't let me on and motions toward the back of the bus - he doesn't mean to use the rear door though, and I return to the bus stop, confused by his gesticulation and our lack of common language. Five minutes later he turns around (the bus stop is at the end of a road where there's a paved bulge to let the buses turn) and lets me on. We go for a while, and eventually he stops. I try to ask if this is where I should get off, and several minutes of frustrating lack of communication ensues as the driver seems kind of pissed off, but eventually decides to keep at it, eventually communicating that I need to cross the road, go about a half block back to another bus stop there, and wait for the bus. I should then show the driver the confirmation fax I got from the hotel that has its address on it. I go; I cross; I wait in the wind and snow. Maybe 10 minutes later, the same driver returns and motions me onto the bus, confusing another man who'd come to the same stop in the meantime and thought that perhaps he should get on via the front door as well. No dice - he has to use the back. Har. The driver took me to the hotel, which I'm not entirely sure was strictly on his route, but there you have it. Good thing one of the few German words I know is danke.

Apparently the price of the hotel includes breakfast. This is good, since I'm not entirely sure that whatever little rural hamlet I've found myself in has much in the way of restaurants. I'm not relishing heading back downtown, still burdened with all this luggage, trying to entertain myself throughout the day, only to return to the hotel booking office hoping there's been another cancellation somewhere. And I'm really not going to be happy if there isn't one and I end up spending >$200 a night for a place to stay.

ben - two comments - Permalink

Day Six - Wednesday

08 February 06 - 09:44 am

Tired from all that walking and not much sleep, I slept until mid afternoon, which was nice. Got the low-down on the tram situation from the front desk people, and while I still don't entirely understand the system's various complexities, I do have a ticket valid for travel until tomorrow afternoon, which should be enough to get me to the train station bound for Frankfurt. Here's hoping. Checked out what plane fare would be. I'm sure there are cheaper flights, but KLM's fare for the trip (via Schiphol, naturally) was over $600. I think not.

Got my laundry done. I take back everything I've ever said about Spanish laundromats being expensive. It cost about double the most expensive load I did there. Which pretty much continues the pattern of everything being so expensive here. Bakery items are only a smidge more expensive than you'd expect, but everything else is more. Further experience leads me to revise, unfortunately upward, my estimates of the cost of living in Zurich, and likely all of Switzerland. Restaurants are 50-100% more; lodging is about 50% more. I just bought a 10" pizza for over $18, declining the customary Coke at $3 / liter.

UPDATE: Channel surfing. Hercules in Space is funnier in German. No question.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Day Five - Tuesday

08 February 06 - 09:26 am

Woke up early, so I'm watching British edutainment. There's a program of a bunch of shorts - 3 so far in the first half hour. In one of them, they're telling this story about a beautiful princess who goes to sleep for a long time, blah blah blah. One character thinks about it and says something like "well, she was beautiful, sure, but then she went to sleep for a long time, and woke up much older". Hah! So later in the show they're telling the adult character about it, and the skeptic mentions how she woke up old, and he says "it sure feels like that sometimes".

Went to the Swiss National Museum. It's a huge museum; not necessarily worth a 10+ mile walk though. Next time, I'll be sure to take the tram. Katie'd like it - whole floor of cool clothes / kids' toys. Tons of stuff. They had some hugely ostentatious old rooms from 15th century merchant families. No photos allowed inside, but I took some of the outside of the building to try to get a sense of scale. Got joked at by a construction worker in German, though he didn't speak English and I know only enough German words to get the barest of literal meanings, we sorted things out. I'll try to get photos posted soonish.

Bought another USB drive enclosure because it was less than $10 more than the bare AC adapter it came with, and wasn't back-ordered. Meh. Got my music and BSG off the drive and backed up some photos to it, so I guess it was worth it.

ben - two comments - Permalink

Day Four - Monday

06 February 06 - 5:53 pm

Stayed up late last night / this morning again, and as a result I didn't get going until almost 1pm. Got a much better map from the front desk, one that even has a street index, which is hugely useful. Also snagged an out-of-date activities guide thing that lists a dozen or more potentially interesting things to see. I'm working on turning the addresses into places on the map, probably for an excursion tomorrow. Struck out on the electronics front, despite checking out 3 different stores. Plenty of 3.5" drive enclosures, but no 2.5" ones. Got a salame sandwich for lunch, with pickle and tomato. And, I think, butter. Or maybe a very soft cheese spread on the bread. Not too sure about that last bit, but it wasn't bad. Bought a few oranges, my favorite travel fruit. As soon as I work up the energy I'm going to head out again, perhaps in an hour when a nearby Indian restaurant opens for dinner.

Mmm, chicken masala. With naan, the best I've had in quite a while. Overheard two professors discussing their grad students and one woman explaining that she got this great coat in France a few days ago, only to discover later that it didn't fit or something. Came back and watched some sort of courtroom drama / political thriller on BBC Prime while working on the map. Turns out I picked the wrong part of Zurich - all the museums and such are south of here. I'm not entirely sure how far south because the map omits any sort of scale, so tomorrow I'm going to take a trek and try to find these places. Also, the laundromat is in that area, so I'll scope that out for Thursday.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Day Three - Sunday

06 February 06 - 5:52 pm

As it happens, my nap yesterday afternoon was a bad idea, and kept me up until after 6am. I listened to Into Thin Air, noticing with semi-conscious surprise that disc 4 ended with "this book continues on disc 4". I finally fell asleep, and woke a bit before noon. I showered and left, so intent on breakfast that I made it a few blocks before remembering that I had intended to bring something to confirm the size of the plug on the AC adapter I was going to buy, but it didn't matter since most businesses were closed.

I walked for a few hours, getting a bit more lost than I'd intended to, eventually stopping at an open bakery to buy their very last loaf of bread. I noticed again, as I had in Spain, the curious fact that walking doesn't make me hungry. In fact, quite the opposite. I walked into the bakery having eaten nothing in the past 18 hours or so and it wasn't until I'd bought the bread and left the store that I started getting hungry again.

I got back to the hotel as the maids were finishing up with my room, and watched CNN while munching. Among other things I saw their sports update segment, which was covering the African Cup of Nations, a big soccer tournament. One guy, Nigerian I think, scored a goal and started doing backflips down the field. I don't mean one or two, either. He went a good way back down the field, flanked by two jogging teammates.

Boring news day. I know.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Day Two - Saturday

05 February 06 - 11:51 am

I awoke at 1am this morning, and puttered about until a bit after 8. I unpacked, read, watched some TV. Fought with the on-again off-again internet access here and managed to get what may actually be all my email. Went for a walk in the chill morning air, wondering if day hadn't really started yet or whether the cool featureless gray sky would be all I saw of daylight. Brought the GPS receiver with me on the theory that it'd get me back where I started should I get lost, a useful feature when wandering an unknown city without a map. No reception. Not a single satellite in range. Learned that I wouldn't be so lucky as to get through the Switzerland part of my trip without having to acquire yet more foreign currency when the counter person at a bakery I stopped at communicated to me in a mix of German and English that neither Euros nor a credit card would buy me the tasty braided loaf on the counter for breakfast. Walked back to the hotel; slept until 6pm.

Headed out again, bound for a currency exchange place I'd been assured was in the train station. Found it and, after some back-and-forth about why a bearded, bespeckled young man was trying to use a clean-shaven, contact-wearing young man's passport to cash a traveler's check, got my Swiss Francs. As with Euros, bills of differing denominations are of differing size. Unlike Euros, the difference is in length only, rather than length and width, with the happy result that the money fits in my wallet. Got Thai take-out and remarked once again to myself how expensive things are here. Both the hotel and dinner were about a third more expensive than their US counterparts. Back at the hotel with my prize, the desk clerk is apologetic that the maids didn't clean my room, owing to my unconscious form on the bed at the unlikely hour of 2pm. I assure her that it's not a problem and try to explain, likely without much success, that I'm just jet-lagged. Indeed it's odd that I'm not terribly awake and alert since it's early evening here, mid-afternoon in Wisconsin, and I've spent 20 of the past 30 hours asleep.

I would watch more BSG except that the portable drive enclosure the next two discs are on has decided to stop working again. Shortly before I left, it inexplicably became unresponsive but just as inexplicably decided to function a bit later, so I'm hoping it will perk up soon. After some tinkering I manage to open the enclosure despite having no suitable screw driver, and coax it to life long enough to copy an episode and change, but now nothing I do makes the slightest bit of difference. Errand for tomorrow: find either an appropriate AC adapter or a replacement enclosure. An AC adapter should do it, since the problem seems isolated to the battery and/or supporting hardware rather than the interface hardware.

ben - six comments - Permalink

Day One - Thursday and Friday

03 February 06 - 6:46 pm

I was reading RD.net the other day and it occurred to me that this blog will be nothing like his. I won't be picking out the highlights and writing about poignant things that happen. That's right: volume is today's word. On that note, we begin day 1. Day 1 is always a complicated concept because my first 24 hours of travel actually span 31 hours of local-time-difference, and typically the point at which I transition from 11:59p local time to 12:01a local time happens over water where it's not at all clear when the transition takes place. In order to confuse and annoy, I am going to lump my first two calendar days of travel into one day on the theory that by EU time, I spent more of my time traveling on Friday than Thursday.

Without further ado, I present to you my thoughts and experiences, in no particular order and often without the benefit of adequate sleep.

Thanks to Mom for the wonderful idea of going to Qdoba to get lunch. Thus it was that at about 2pm when everyone else on the plane was enjoying their $5 beers, $1 snacks, or free sodawaterjuice, I had a burrito. Cold by this point, but quite tasty none the less.

Detroit's airport has better WAPs than does Atlanta. No SSH holes means no web access, no email, and less to do while waiting for my flight. No matter; it was a short layover anyway. Detroit to Amsterdam on an Airbus A-330 tricked out with video screens and games/video/other on demand for every seat. Watched a Morgan Freeman movie whose title I could probably find on IMDB if I tried [EDIT: An Unfinished Life] (recommended), North Country (recommended), and part of Minority Report (about as anticipated). Lunch was passable chicken with slightly mushy green beans and vaguely rubbery potatos. Also a "salad" (lettuce + diced cucumber and 2 slices of tomato that I actually ate), a dinner roll - with fake butter which I didn't eat, and a foam brownie that I also didn't eat topped with a thick layer of chocolate frosting which I did eat. The next morning (or midnight Madison time) we were served a breakfast of those vaguely fake pre-mixed yogurts you see at the grocery store, a fairly tasty if uninspired fruit cocktail filled so full that it sprayed me with sugar syrup when I opened it, and what was intended to evoke biscuit + egg. The latter was completely inedible, to the point of spitting back out the experimental bite I tried against my better judgement.

Ignored advice to go to the McDonalds at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam (maybe on the way back) due to lazy + busy + not hungry + long plane rides make me queezy. They would have had a tastier egg biscuit thing. I'm not sure how, given that their biscuits really aren't very good, but somehow they make it work. I still prefer Hardees for breakfast, but to be fair that's based on 10-year-old memories of a restaurant which I'm not even sure is still in business.

Got my passport stamped because I went to the wrong transfer desk to get my boarding pass for the flight to Zurich. I thought it odd that I'd been told to go to a transfer desk on the far side of passport control, but off I went anyway. Got my ticket though, so that was OK. Security at the airport's about the same as in the US (laptop out, coat off, wander through the metal detector) except that they don't check your boarding pass on either side of the metal detector and the people working there have a sense of humor about the whole thing. Had about 2 hours to kill so I watched the BSG I'd planned to watch on the plane but didn't due to the presence of the VOD system.

The local hub part of Schiphol is apparently open to the public so there are little screening depots in front of all the gates there that get manned when there are flights about to take off. Otherwise the equipment just sits there and beeps if you walk through the metal detector rather than around it. I suspect the reason why my gate got changed at the last minute was to catch people like me who'd been there for a while and had walked through the security gates when nobody was manning them. Took a literally 10-minute bus trip around the airport from the gate out to an open patch of cement over by service hangars and the like that had dozens of little planes, about half of them jets, parked on it. Pretty tired by then, so I don't remember much, except that it was about 10 times as comfy as the Atlanta to Madison flight last time.

Cleared customs and passport control in record time, and headed out to the hotel reservation board. Got a small but clean room in Oerlikon, a 5-minute, 4-dollar train trip from the airport, followed by about half an hour of trying to find the damned street. Checked in; finished my episode; slept for 13 hours, until a bit after 1am local time.

ben - No comments - Permalink

Tech: for the nosy

01 February 06 - 09:41 am

For the nosy, things I am bringing:

• Laptop + spare battery + charger


• Headphones


• USB hard drive


• Camera + spare battery + flash unit


• GPS receiver


• Spare AA and AAA batteries


• AA/AAA NiMH battery charger; camera battery charger


• World-compatible switching PSU for battery chargers


• Good flashlight

Also plug adapters. Most of the variability in terms of EU power plugs is in the grounding strap, plug, pin, screw, etc. Consequently, most international travel adapters leave out the ground wire and adapt just the hot and neutral pins. Fortunately, nothing I'm plugging in would use a ground anyway, so there's no loss there. Relatedly, UK plugs use the ground on everything, and their power plug is absolutely monstrous, more like what you see on US appliances that require 20A sockets.

The laptop and headphones are required for airplane sanity. The camera is likewise a requirement. The flash proved useful on my last trip, so I'm bringing it again. The USB hard drive starts out full of movies (this trip: BSG) and ends up full of photos. I feel reasonably secure having my photos on the laptop and the removable drive. The flashlight hasn't been useful thus far, but I'm stubborn. The GPS receiver isn't actually useful for anything but it keeps me amused on plane, train, and bus rides. And spare batteries. NiMH rechargeables are great, but I still need enough to swap out the flash and GPS receiver at the same time, so I'm carrying quite a bit of juice around.

End rambling.

ben - three comments - Permalink